UpdateA Napoleon Bonaparte hat was auctioned today in Paris for 1.93 million euros including costs. According to auction house Osenat, this is a record amount. “The hat was his symbol,” says the auctioneer. It was not announced who can call themselves the lucky owner of the gadget.
Experts had estimated the value of the nineteenth-century hat at 600,000 to 800,000 euros. The starting amount was 500,000 euros. Ultimately, the headgear changed hands for four times that price.
According to historians, Napoleon owned approximately 120 hats. There are barely twenty hats left, all of which are part of private collections. The hat is being sold along with other items belonging to Napoleon, such as a silver plate from his carriage after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and a wooden make-up case containing razors, a silver toothbrush and scissors.
A sign of fighting power
Most officers wore their hats perpendicular to their heads, but that would have been different for Napoleon. He placed the headdress sideways on his head, a sign of his fighting prowess. “People recognized Napoleon by his hat,” says auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat. “It was his symbol.”
In 2014, a South Korean paid no less than 1.8 million euros for a similar Napoleon headgear at the same auction house, a record amount at the time. That hat was in better condition and came from the collection of the princely family of Monaco.
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